1938: A Very British Civil War BA-6

So I finally got around to buying some of the books for Solway Crafts absolutely brilliantly and wonderfully barmy tabletop wargame, 1938: A Very British Civil War.
Now, in my haste to become one of the many people who have this game, I may have not really been paying that much attention to what I bought from North Star Figures since I bought the Concise (which it really is) Source Book and A Guide to Tanks and Military Vehicles. I thought the first one was the rulebook.
BUT enough about my mistakes.

A good week or so ago, I purchased possibly my... fifth? No, sixth purchase ever of a Warlord Games product, the Soviet-built BA-6 armoured car.


Now, when I first saw anything to do with 1938:AVBCW, one of my main thoughts was; "Okay, so the single largest imperial and political faction in the world in the 1930s is having a civil war, during a period when one country is gearing up for a war and another is also preparing to go to war too. There is no way in hell that either country would not try and use this to their advantage."

And I was right. Since in A Guide to Tanks and Military Vehicles, we see examples of armoured fighting vehicles from Nazi Germany (the Panzer I and the NbFZ or Neubaufahrzeug "New Construction Vehicle") and Fascist Italy (the Lancia armoured car and the Fiat tankette) being used by the British Union of Fascist and examples of armoured fighting vehicles from Soviet Russia (the T-26 and the T-28 being the examples used) for the socialist forces. This example is reinforced by the inclusion of the fact from the source book which says that the Soviets did send advisers, crews and equipment to aid the socialist forces. Which settled it for me: I would paint the BA-6 for use with the armed wing of the socialist forces in Britain during the conflict, the People's Assault Column.

I had ideas for originally starting with the BUF, but buying the BA-6 kind of clinched it for me.

As you can see, the model is resin and metal. The resin is pretty good quality, although some bits on the turret needing filing down and it turns out those bits on the sides of the rear part of the chassis that I thought were simply flash turned out to be actually a part of the vehicle, as it shows in the very first picture above. Whoops. And the holes for the guns in the turret and in the drivers compartment needed to be drilled in before I put them in, along with the holes for the headlights, which was a pain simply because of where they were.
The metal was a bit... hit and miss. The guns in the turret fitted all right apart from a minor bit of filing for the gun in the hull. The wheels were all right, but the axles for the front and the rod for the two wheels at the middle had a habit of simply falling off so I had to be careful with those. And the steps in to the drivers compartment really did not want to stay in, especially the one on the right hand side! In the end, I just had to get rid of that one all together, which you will see at the end of the post.

 Next up is the painting. After undercoating the model with a Chaos Black spray, I basecoated it with the Army Painter primer spray, Angel Green, since from what I've seen in photos, that's pretty damn close to the simple green used for Soviet military vehicles.

Next began the drybrushing. I used a liberal drybrush of Castellan Green. Technically, the primer wasn't official Citadel paint, so I think that I can get away with using the basecoat paint over the primer/basecoat.

Now I'm not 100% sure whether this is because the picture is darker or whether it's because of the wash I applied, but at this stage of the model, I applied a wash of Agrax Earthshade, probably the best thing created by Games Workshop for painting.

May have skipped taking a photo of the step after the application of the wash, but I used a drybrush of Loren Green to get the colour up a bit. After that, I started painting on the more detailed parts, mainly painting on the initials of the People's Assault Column and the Red Star. The star is... it's not good. I really should have used the decals I got with the T-34/85 I got a few months ago (photos of that will be coming up), but right now I'm sticking with it. I am pleased with the PAC initials on the turret though. The details were painted in Khorne Red first before going over them with Wazdakka Red.

And here are the finished photos. I plan to buy some period relevant terrain and also some militia models for the PAC so I can take some proper photos of the BA-6 and infantry support in action. But all in due time.
To get the weathered look, I applied a light drybrush on areas at the front and around the edges of Leadbelcher, while using a fine detail brush to apply relatively thick patches of Leadbelcher to areas that I think would most likely have been nicked by terrain and enemy small-arms fire, before applying small patches of Runefang Silver to those areas to make them pop a bit. The mud splatter was achieved by drybrushing, quite heavily, the lower portion of the model with Mournfang Brown. Mud is mud.

And so the model is finished! All in all, I pretty damn pleased with model. It helped me work out how to paint a military vehicles in a single uniform colour, which is something I thought I'd struggle with, while also helping me get out of the sci-fi/40k hole I'm slightly digging myself in to.
While this isn't the first historical model I've ever bought (and I have a good number of them still left unfinished), it is the first one I've completed fully to a standard I feel comfortable showing off to people.

Another WIP

Well work has been a pain since it has cut my creativity to a huge degree.
But I finally pulled my thumb out and did something.

One of my Morphean Highlanders in... some of his painted glory.

An update and Morphean Highlander Taurox WIP.

So... it's been nearly four months since my last update. I'll cut a long story short on the reason why: life. I've just not had a good time of it. Between loosing my job, having money stolen from my account, falling sick and not being able to get any news on whatever job I apply for... it's just not been the best combination for my mental health. *sigh*

Anyway, on to the models!
When I had a reasonable amount of money in my account, I went out and bought an Astra Militarum Taurox kit. I'll be honest, I think I was one of the few people who actually kind of liked the model when it came out. So I bought it, while at the same time ordering some very cool resin kits from Zinge Industries' (zinge.co.uk) resin APC range to swap out the Taurox's caterpillar tracks for a set of wheels (along with other bits) to turn it into a 40k MRAP.

 (no idea why the top one came out blurry but the bottom one didn't)

So, I think it turn out quite well. This also marks the start of the colour scheme I'll be using on the vehicles for my Morphean Highlanders: basically a drab green colour with a red invasion stripe down the middle for easy identification from the air. I obviously based this around the orange IFF panels used by Coalition forces during the Invasion of Iraq, and the idea I had behind this particular regiment, the Morphean 101st Highland Regiment of Foot is that they're engaged in a war against anti-Imperial secessionist forces in the Karisol system. Obviously, particular vehicles such as command tanks and vehicles will have a simple camouflage scheme in place of the drab green while other vehicles will have camouflage netting on them.

I also have an idea for quick identification flashes on the flanks of vehicles such as the Taurox or Chimeras, but that's still a work in progress so I'm not 100% on them yet.

So yeah, that's all I've got for now, but I hope to have something up before the end of the month.

Morphean Highlanders Heavy Weapons Squad WIP

Well, I hope everyone had a nice and productive Christmas and new year. I myself binged on too much chocolate and cracked a tooth (they are not related incidents, trust me). But as I said, I'd be more productive after the new year and I have.

After a trip to my 'local' hobby store (I stress local since my position in Wales puts me pretty far away from any official GW store or hobby stockist outside of using the internet), I came home with the Cadian Shock Troops Heavy Weapons Squad.
So I got to work (don't mind the camera quality. I took the photos with my phone):

First up is the first crewman for heavy bolter crew one. He's made using a mix of parts from Victoria Lamb (the kilted legs and the lasgun barrel), Forge World bits (the arms) and standard GW parts (the body and the ammo case in his hand).

Secondly is the heavy bolter herself. Almost a standard fair with this, except for the inclusion of a box from the Italeri Modern Battle Accessories box and metal sandbags from The Assault Group to help beef up the base. I plan to have the whole model look like it's being used in the middle of a pitched battle, so I plan to include a fair bit of battle detritus, but not too much so I don't overburden the model. Maybe just a few 'empty' ammo boxes.

So that's it for now. See you later.

Painting Imperial Guardsmen - Rhodesian style!

I know that for a first post, this is quite a stretch, but I tried uploading this tutorial up to my Tumblr page and... well, to put it bluntly, Tumblr just went "Nope!" and never let me upload it. So I'm doing it here. Actually, this is the reason why I created this blog in the first place.

Now for a bit of background on the reason for this tutorial: I've been heavily in to military history for a long time now, ever since I was a young(er) lad. But ever since me joining Tumblr, my love of history has been expanded by being introduced to a conflict that is very rarely ever mentioned but can be considered to be quite important in terms of modern warfare: the Rhodesian Bush War. I won't go in to much detail on the war, since I've provided a link and it would make this post quite a long one. Plus, I also do intend to paint up some models for the Rhodesian Bush War in the near future.
To cut a long story short, the Rhodesian Defence Forces created a new camouflage scheme, a variant of the British 1959 pattern Denison Smock, more suited to the warmer environments of the Rhodesian bush. This was simply called Rhodesian Brushstroke.

In terms of camouflage schemes, it's quite high on the list of schemes that can be quite daunting to paint. I don't doubt that at all. I think it's got to be up there with the modern digital camouflage schemes (ACU, MARPAT, MTP, etc), so it doesn't really strike me that it's only seen on miniatures that are used for the Rhodesian Defence Forces. But I was really shocked to see that hardly anyone in the Warhammer 40k community has attempted it for the Guard.

So, I decided to rectify it and give it a go. Now I admittedly did not look around the internet for any tutorials on how to paint it. This was due to two things:

1. I wanted to have a go at this myself just to give it a go.
2. I am admittedly quite a lazy little bugger. Heh.

I was bit stuck on what colour paints to use, but a trip to my local Games Workshop in Chester helped me with that conundrum. I would like to thank Matthew for giving me the starting point with what paints to use for the camouflage.

Anyway, on to the tutorial proper!

Paints Needed.

I wanted to keep the practice scheme as close to the original scheme as shown in the first photo, so I went for mainly muted brushland colours. I've also got a lot of the older Citadel colours left over from before the change (a curse from being in this hobby for over 10 years), but the conversion chart is readily available on the GW site.

So for paints, you'll need:

• XV88
• Bleached Bone
• Seraphim Sepia
• Straken Green
• Catachan Green
• Chaos Black
• Mournfang Brown
• Lahmian Medium

I will say this upfront: I did regretfully not water down some of these paints enough and it does show on the models. But hey, practice makes perfect, no?

For the models, I used the £6 box of five snap-fit Cadian Shock Troops. They're simple to build and not that difficult to paint so they make good practice models. For ease of reference, I'll be showing both the front and back of the models. I do have to apologise about the varying qualities of the photographs.

The Painting.

Step 1: After undercoating the models in Chaos Black undercoat, I basecoated the areas of cloth with a layer of XV88.

Step 2: Over the XV88, layer on Bleached Bone. Do one or two layers, depends if you want to try and keep it as clean as possible. I applied roughly two layers to my models.

Step 3: Over the layer of Bleached Bone, apply a wash of Seraphim Sepia. Now regretfully for the next phase, I think that I overdid the next layer due to not being able to see the shading through the paint. Again, it's all practice so live and learn. I also did unfortunately mix up the placement of the models, so sorry about that.

Steps 4 and 5: Now this is one of the reasons why I didn't go with any online tutorials, since I wanted to a bit of experimenting. Originally, I was going to layer over the shaded Bleached Bone with Straken Green, but I found that the Straken Green was a bit too bright, so I decided to try mixing it with some Bleached Bone. The model on the left was done with 1:1 mix of Bleached Bone:Straken Green while the model on the right was done with a 3:1 mix of Bleached Bone:Straken Green.

I did forget to take pictures of the models with the third layer applied, so I apologise about that, but it doesn't really make much of a difference since you can still see the layers. Anyway. For the first layer of the camouflage patches, I used straight Catachan Green and applied it to the Bleached Bone:Straken Green mix using the side of the fine detail brush. One of the things that I should stress is that when you're applying the patches to the cloth, make sure the patches on the jacket don't spill over on to the trousers. This shows that the Guardsman is wearing two separate pieces of clothing and it also helps break up the outline of the model.

Step 6: The next step for the camouflage is to apply some more patches with a 1:1 mix of Mournfang Brown:Lahmian Medium. Now I cannot stress how brilliant Lahmian Medium is for painting. Essentially, it's a thinning agent for paint in lieu of watering the paint down. If you thin paint down with water, you also water down the pigment which essentially turns the paint in to a water-colour. But with Lahmian Medium, the strength of the pigment is kept pretty much the same, meaning you can keep the strength of the paint you mixed it with, in this case brown.

Step 7: And you're done! Apply your chosen colours for the armour, skin and other equipment on the model, and you'll be gold.

My examples are a bit plain, I know. I'd have liked to include some fully painted examples of the models, but work and preparing for Christmas has been hell on my schedule. I'll try and get them done soon.
Still, if this helps any of you, I'm perfectly happy.